


Returning Home

by dragoninatrenchcoat



Series: Someone Else [2]
Category: Cabin Pressure, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Horror, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 16:05:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragoninatrenchcoat/pseuds/dragoninatrenchcoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "Willy Wonka".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Non-Escape

They were going to kill him.  
  
Martin’s heart froze in despair. They were going to kill him, after all that he’d done. Someone reminded him that Willy Wonka dies in the story. Not in the book, but at the end of the story, he dies like everyone else, and now it was Martin’s turn.  
  
No. It can’t happen. What he’d done - that couldn’t be the last thing he ever did, it couldn’t, it’s too horrible. Is this what he’d turned into? Just because he’d walked into the wrong hangar, he’s going to die. _ I’m going to die a criminal._  
  
And then... they were gone.  
  
He woke up in his cell, but his chains were off and the door was open. It was obviously a trap, but he was unable to keep himself from going. The hallway was empty. At the end of the hall, the lunchroom was empty. Beyond the door, another empty hallway, empty rooms everywhere. He pushed open a door to find an empty shipping bay.  
  
He shivered. Was he the last man on the Earth?  
  
But no. The street wasn’t empty. He didn’t have money so he couldn’t hail a cab. Where was he? Ask someone on the street - anyone - _where is this? Where am I? How do I get home? How can I go back? How can I make it so that this never happened?_  
  
No one had those answers. But someone told him he was in London.  
  
London. He knew where that was. He could get home.  
  
Martin walked until his feet were sore and kept going, following maps on signs and newspapers and word-of-mouth directions. When he recognized the area, he didn’t need it at all, and he walked to the airport. He’d been walking miles and miles, but he didn’t care, and his legs were on fire but he was home again, an airfield, and everything could go back to normal now, nothing had ever happened and the children had never - and the man with the crazy eyes -  
  
“Can I see your I.D.?” the guard at the employee entrance asked.  
  
His hope shattered. He didn’t have his I.D. He didn’t have any identification at all, because he didn’t exist. Even if he did have his I.D....  
  
His face...  
  
“Douglas,” he found himself saying. Desperately. “Douglas Richardson. First Officer of MJN - is he here? Please tell me he’s here.” Begging now.  
  
“MJN? You mean that dinky airline with the crapped-out plane?” Oh, thank God, their reputation among the airfields - even a bad one - served a purpose.  
  
“Yes,” he said, as though the guard had singlehandedly rescued him.  
  
“They’ve been here for a while. Weeks, actually. They’ve been grounded.” He looked at Martin skeptically. “Hey, have I seen you somewhere before?”  
  
His face. _His face._ Did it belong to someone else? He’d thought it was just - just another face, just not his, but - if it were someone _else’s..._  
  
Oh, God. He felt fear hollow him out. Who was he?  
  
“Calm down,” said the guard, alarmed. He must have seen the fear on Martin’s face. “Calm down, I didn’t mean anything. I’ll go look for Mr. Richardson, put out a word. Wait by that coffeeshop, I’ll send him here.”  
  
He pointed to the public part of the airport. How many times had Martin been to that coffeeshop? They wouldn’t know it’s him. “Thank you,” he said, his voice shaking, and he left.  
  
He’d never be the same. Ever. He’d always be the man who tortured children.  
  
He felt a tear crawl down his face.  
  
Someone else’s face.


	2. Douglas

He’d been sitting at a table in the coffeeshop for an hour. He didn’t order anything; he didn’t have any money. Just a grungy old coat and scarf and shoes that were once expensive. He was hungry, but he’d been so hungry for so long that he didn’t notice anymore.  
  
“Who are you?” a familiar voice asked.  
  
Martin looked up and saw Douglas standing above him, and so suddenly did he feel his heart well up that he didn’t have time to think before he launched to his feet and hugged him.  
  
He’d never hugged Douglas before. They didn’t really have a ‘huggy’ kind of relationship. But it was all he could do, he hadn’t seen the first officer in so long and he’d never thought he’d see him again and he said so as he felt his chest burst.  
  
It was hardly the sort of dignified thing a Captain would do.  
  
He didn’t care.  
  
He felt Douglas grab his shoulders and push him away, his eyes filled with mistrust. “Do I know you?” he said.  
  
Martin shuddered. “Douglas,” he said. “It’s me, it’s Martin. Please, Douglas.”  
  
But his co-pilot only pushed him away, angry. “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”  
  
Douglas didn’t believe him. He felt the cold, biting cloud of fear in him again. “Douglas.” His voice sounded desperate, and he didn’t care. “You have to believe me. I- I was taken, I walked into a hangar where they were -” _you promised not to tell. Does that still matter?_ “They took me, and - and they-”  
  
“You think that just because he’s been gone for a few weeks I’ll forget what he looks like?”  
  
Panic. “They changed my face! It was some surgery, o-or -” his heart pounded in his chest, his hands shook. He was losing this battle, he was losing Douglas. “They made me -” he swallowed. “I don’t know who I am, I don’t - what they made me do, what they -” _Willy Wonka, the wonderfully wonky chocolatier, bringing tears to the eyes of children with his wonderfully wonky chocolates,_ and he felt himself shudder with fear and memory and disgust.  
  
Douglas didn’t say anything. Martin’s whole body began to shake. He tried to stop it, but it only made him shake harder, shivering like he was stranded on the tundra but it was very warm inside, and he couldn’t stop thinking about all those days in the little cell and the warehouse, the chocolate factory, it was all coming back and he was going to throw up -  
  
He did, all over the floor. “I’m sorry,” he said immediately. It was a mess. It would be such a hassle to clean up, not to mention disgusting. There’s nothing worse than cleaning up someone else’s puke. “I’m sorry,” he said again, “I’ll clean it up -”  
  
He was being dragged away, though. He looked over and saw Douglas’s hand on his arm, leading him away from the mess on the floor and the people moving to clean it up. He saw the disgust on their faces. There was another apology on his lips, but then they were through a doorway. They wouldn’t hear him.  
  
The two of them walked in silence, and Martin couldn’t tell whether Douglas believed him or not. _Probably not._ Likely he was leading his captain to the police.  
  
Captain. Martin’s heart sunk. He might never fly again.  
  
Douglas led him outside, around the fence. He could see the tarmac through the chain link, and the sight made Martin smile sadly.  
  
They didn’t stop walking until they were at the end of the runway, just outside the fence, where planes would have to fly over them to take off and land. It was one of Martin’s favorite places on the airfield. Wordlessly, he got lost in watching the planes like he always had when he was young, watching them move, watching the moment their wheels left the ground and they leapt into the sky, unsupported. It served to take his mind off things, for a few moments.  
  
He realized after a while that Douglas was staring at him. He looked at his co-pilot - if they’d ever fly together again - with dread, waiting for him to say Martin was a fake and he was going to the police.  
  
“Start from the beginning,” Douglas said, and closed his eyes.  
  
Martin thought that was peculiar, but he couldn’t let the opportunity pass by. “It was just after we landed,” he told him, his voice tumbling out of him. He barely had time to register what he was saying. “I went off into a hangar, and saw a man - he was about to kill someone, with a gun. I heard what they were saying, one of them had failed the other - probably the one about to get killed had done the failing - and I didn’t get away fast enough, they grabbed me and... I didn’t notice they’d put me out until I woke up....”  
  
All of it fell out of him, the words bursting from his mouth like the remnants of what food he’d had in his system had earlier. He felt distant, as though what he was saying had happened to someone else, as though he was recounting something he’d seen on the telly. His eyes got lost in the planes soaring over him and it was so much easier to focus on that than on what he was saying - until his voice cracked on the word _chocolate_ and he came slamming back down, his words halting, wavering on his feet -  
  
He felt Douglas hold him up, which was just as well because he’d lost all his strength, all his blood had gone somewhere else and he was suddenly so cold.  
  
They stood like that for a moment, and Martin tried desperately not to think of anything at all. He felt Douglas prodding him, first on the top of his head, and then below his ear at the jawline, then he moved his chin so they were looking into one another’s eyes. It looked like the older man was searching for something within his gaze, but Martin had the fleeting thought that there was nothing to find, that the fear and the cold had emptied him out and he was nothing anymore, no one.  
  
“Martin?” Douglas asked, his voice vulnerable, soft, nothing like it usually was. But he was looking for someone that didn’t exist.  
  
Did he?  
  
Martin felt a wall break somewhere, and suddenly his vision was blurry. Tears rained down his cheeks unbidden. Distantly, he thought, _this isn’t how a captain should act. Captains never cry._  
  
And first officers never hug their captains, but that didn’t stop Douglas.


End file.
